Christopher V. Hill - Draft:
Not for citation without the author's approval.

The Peasants of Jharkhand and
the Peasants of Jharkhand:
A Preliminary Appraisal Christopher V. Hill
Peasant Symposium Draft, May 1997

The kisans are victim to a continuing series of exploitations. For example, if they
were able to meet their needs of woods from the jungle, then what would be left
for the forest officials, great and small to do. In fact these "rangers," "foresters,"
"patrolmen," and others seek out any opportunity to oppress the people, very much
like beasts of prey. If they are not bribed, their sole object is to harass the poor.
My blood begins to boil when I recall the many stories told to me by the Adivasi
kisans of the harassment they have had to endure at the hands of forest officers.(1)
--Swami Sahajanand Saraswati

In previous works I have argued at some length that subjugation of nature was part and parcel
of the legitimizing aspect of imperialism in colonial India. If the "White Man's Burden" provided
the rationale for Eurocentric approaches to the issues of politics, education, and economy, so did
European notions of the purpose and uses of nature result in Western forms of land control,
public works, and forestry management in the colonial period.(2) Sir Arthur Cotton, the director of
the Mahanadi River Management System, made this point quite clear in arguing to dam the
Mahanadi: "In [any] district where our Western knowledge and energy have been brought to
bear, the people freely acknowledge that it is to Europeans and Christians that they are indebted
for benefits which they never received from their own Government, and their own gods."(3) While
Cotton's comments revolve around the tired clichés of imperial justification, they are still a
telling example of the link between social and environmental attitudes brought forth by the
colonial infrastructure.

In this paper, however, I would like to turn this equation upside down, turning away from my
contention that colonial ideology, which defined the role of government in "civilizing" the Indian
population, also defined the function of nature. I will instead argue that concepts of nature in
turn affected European ideas of the worthiness of certain ethnic groups, especially non-sedentary
ones. This view of what constituted civilization and modernization led the Raj to view
swidden agriculture as standing in the way of progress; as such, given this prevailing philosophy,
the government was determined to eradicate this cultivating process, always under the guise of
British trusteeship. No where is the implementation of this policy more obvious than it is with
the Santal adivasis located in the Jungle Thanas of Jharkhand.

It is not my purpose here to detail Santal ethnography, studies of which are in abundance.
Suffice it to note that the origin of the Santals is a matter of some dispute. We do know that they
came from an area which was extremely hilly and forest covered; as such, the Santals had
practiced shifting cultivation well before their move to Chotanagpur. Between 1790 and 1810,
however, due to population pressure and a severe decrease in land, the Santals moved north into
the area known as Damin-i-koh, which comprised the hilly portions of what would become the
Santal Parganas.

The migration of the Santals to the Damin-i-Koh in the early nineteenth century set in motion
a livelihood that would come to be inextricably tied to the advancing market economy of the
British Empire, which carried with it the notion of nature as capital. Between 1838 and 1851,
some 80,000 Santals were encouraged by the East India Company to migrate to the Damin-i-koh,
clear the forests, and settle the land. This they did, as was their tradition, in clusters; the Santals
were a communal society, and always settle as a body and with a headman. And here their
problems began, for under the aegis of the emerging world economy, the Santals were now
fixtures in a settled, commercial, cash enterprise. Never having been involved in cash ventures,
the tribals soon found themselves in debt to the local landlords and mahajans, or moneylenders.
The mahajans were non-Santals (often Bengalis), collectively referred to by the tribals as dikkus,
or outsiders. As W.W. Hunter noted, the Santals were ignorant of adjudication regarding
commercial revenue, while the mahajans were well-versed in the letter of the law; Hunter's
understanding of the consequences of capitalism in this tribal community, although imbued with
colonial rhetoric, are nonetheless sophisticated, and as such his views need to be quoted to some
extent:

The law of supply and demand operates in the long-run as effectively, although more
tardily, in the valley of the Ganges as on the banks of the Mersey or the Clyde....Hindu
merchants flock thither every winter after harvest to buy up the crop, and by degrees each
market-town throughout the settlement had its own grain dealer....They cheated the poor
Santal in every transaction. The forester brought his clarified butter for sale; the Hindu
measured it in vessels with false bottoms; the husbandman came to exchange his rice for
salt, oil, cloth and gunpowder; the Hindu used heavy weights in ascertaining the quantity
of grain, light ones in weighing out the articles given in return....The fortunes made by
traffic in produce were augmented by usury. A family of new settlers required a small
advance of grain to eke out the produce of the chase while they were clearing the jungle.
The Hindu dealer gave them a few shillings worth of rice, and seized the land as soon as
they had cleared it and sown the crop....Year after year the Santal sweated for his
oppressor. If the victim threatened to run off into the jungle, the usurer instituted a suit in
the courts, taking care that the Santal should know nothing of it until the decree had been
obtained and the execution carried out. Without the slightest warning, the poor
husbandman's buffalos, cows, and little homestead were sold, not omitting the brazen
household vessels which formed the sole heirloom of the family. Even the cheap iron
ornaments, the outward token of female respectability among the Santals, were torn from
the wife's wrists. Redress was out of the question; the court sat in the civil station
perhaps a hundred miles off. The English judge, engrossed with the collection of the
revenue, had no time for the petty grievance of his people. The native underlings, one
and all, had taken the pay of the oppressor; the police shared in the spoil. 'God is great,
but He is too far off,' said the Santal; and the poor cried, and there was none to help them ..(4)

In short, the Santals were thrown smack against the harsh reality of a commercial economy.
While they served a necessary function in clearing away wilderness, the pursuant market
commodity was too valuable to allow the Santals to control it. They were soon alone, alienated
from the land, disenfranchised from the economy.

By the summer of 1855 the Santals had had enough. Venting their fury against sarkar,
sahukar, zamindar (government, moneylender, and landlord), the Santals attacked moneylenders
and policemen.(5) Some thirty thousand tribals took up their bows and arrows; they were met by
fourteen thousand well-armed government troops. In the pursuing conflict, over ten thousand
Santals were killed.

This ruthless and disastrous encounter eventually led to a reaction on the part of the Raj to the
plight of the Santals. In late 1855 "the district called the Damin-i-koh and other districts which
are chiefly inhabited by the uncivilized race of people called the Sonthals" were incorporated into
the Santal Parganas.(6) Two stipulations of the covenant with the Santals need to be emphasized:
The agreement was not retroactive in terms of loss of land, and it did not cover the Jungle
Mahals of Birbhum, Bankura, Burdwan and Midnapur, all of which were located southwest of
the Santal Parganas.

The exclusion of the Jungle Mahals was made all the more pertinent by the provisions for
revenue administration in the Santal Parganas. Under the provisions set forth in 1855 (and
amended in 1886) the adivasis within the Santal Parganas received specific protections for their
agrarian enterprises. Within the district there were to be no under-raiyats, nor could rents be
raised arbitrarily. Rather, provisions were made so that the raiyat could petition the Deputy
Commissioner of the district to settle the rent. Of primary importance, however, was the clause
that exempted the raiyat from liability to eviction except by the direct offer of the Deputy
Commissioner.

None of these protections applied to the Jungle Mahals, which were instead guided by the
provisions of the Bengal Tenancy Act. Under the Bengal Tenancy Act, as Swami Sahajanand
Saraswati has noted, "an occupancy tenant is considered to be the owner of his land. He has the
right to plant trees and bamboos on this land, to make bricks and tiles and dig wells and
tanks.....But non-occupancy tenants have no such rights. (7) The Santals were, of course,
considered non-occupancy tenants. Furthermore, instead of protecting the land rights of these
adivasis, the government argued that local customs, which effectively put the control of land into
the hands of powerful zamindars, must prevail. This policy was ludicrous; as Sahajanand noted,
"the very idea of local customs involving zamindars is meaningless," since the adivasis were on
the land well before zamindars appeared on the scene.(8)

Given the fact the colonial officials knew full well that zamindari rights historically did not
prevail in Jharkhand, why would the government put forth such a basis charade? It is here that I
would come to the heart of my argument: Colonial actions were guided by an inherent suspicion
of impermanent populations.

This distrust of shifting cultivators did not germinate in India; rather it was imported from
Europe. One need only look at European attitudes towards gypsies (who ironically originated in
India) to see the genesis of this view. Gypsies were viewed as extremely untrustworthy; they
were vagabonds, in the very pejorative sense of the word. They were always sneaking off into
the night; since they did not settle down, they must be up to something illegal. This attitude
was popular throughout Europe, so much so that the gypsies were the only non-Jewish group that
the Nazis marked for complete eradication.

This basic suspicion of wandering ethnic groups was carried to India on the shoulders of
physiocracy and utilitarianism. Once there, two policies immediately reinforced the distrust of
adivasi land management: The Permanent Settlement of 1793, and the introduction of the
concept of Criminal Castes and Tribes.

The Permanent Settlement, with its policy of an unchanging revenue on fixed estates had no
place for shifting cultivation. I have looked at this aspect in some detail with regards to
surveying land on the always-shifting Kosi River in North Bihar; suffice it to say that
implementation of the Permanent Settlement led to numerous survey and settlement operations,
and thousand of lawsuits.(9)

In the Jharkhand, however, the administration had much more flexibility in forcing the Santals
to change their lives, since adivasi homelands were under special direct control of the
government. As such, Revenue Officers could force sedentary agriculture upon them in the guise
of "civilizing" the backwards tribes. If the adivasis refused to accept the beneficence of the Raj,
they were labeled a Criminal Tribe and dealt with by the law.

This process can be seen more clearly in confrontations between the adivasis and the Forest
Service. In a remarkable new study, Mahesh Rangarajan has detailed this conflict in the Central
Provinces from 1860-1920. The Forest Act of 1878 essentially changes the way the government
looked at the woods. As forests became increasingly commodified, the authority of the Forest
Officers grew, increasing the conflict between revenue officers, who wanted the forests cleared
for cultivation, and the Forestry Service which wanted the timber for revenue. In most arenas the
Forest officers won. These men, trained as silviculturalists, knew little or nothing of the customs
of the adivasis, nor did they care. They instead concentrated on production, by excluding cattle
grazing from the forests and increasing the proportion of "superior" trees, such as teak and sal.
This meant a complete change in life for swidden agriculturalists.(10)

In Jharkhand the implementation of forest policy was carried out in several ways. One was to
turn to the zamindars to help establish commercial forestry. Land was increasingly settled with
dikkus, under the provisions of the Bengal Tenancy Act, with the stipulation that forests were to
be managed and lumber was to be sold to the government. As for the Santals, the administration
simply waited until they ran out of room; as noted by Revenue Officer M. C. McAlpin "The
Sonthals are on the verge of the purely Dikku areas, where reclamation is drawing to a close, and
where there is jungle possessing any terror for the mahajan....The Sonthals have been reduced to
the status of a raiyat or under-raiyat rack-rented on a large produce rent or...is being reduced to
the position of a labourer."(11).

I would argue that this is precisely the state the government wanted them in. The Revenue
Department soon realized that the Santals would never practice settled agriculture in the way it
was performed in Britain. They also realized the skills of the Santals at clearing jungle and
reclaiming land. As such, the government was able to kill two birds with one stone: On the one
hand they could put the land in the hands of the Dikkus, who would practice orthodox
cultivation, while on the other they now had a disenfranchised group to work on clearing the land
in other districts so that they too could be brought under cultivation. In the last decades of the
nineteenth century, thousand of Santals were encouraged to migrate to other areas either to clear
the jungles or work on plantations. With little alternative, large numbers often complied.

The state of Jharkhand that the Swami found in 1941 was largely a product of the policies
listed above. Santals in Jharkhand found themselves completely disenfranchised from their
lands. They either worked as laborers, migrated, or starved. As the quote at the beginning of
this paper demonstrates, it was a fate that affected Sahajanand deeply. After seeing the
circumstances in Jharkhand, the Swami put forth a list of demands, including: Fixed rates of
rents only after five years of cultivation; no restrictions on the use of jungle products; Paharias to
be allowed to continue swidden agriculture; and one uniform tenancy act for all of Jharkhand.(12)

Of doubtless little surprise to the Swami, none of the demands were addressed. As
Sahajanand later concluded, "the law in practice is neither that of the Chotanagpur Tenancy Act
nor the inherited experiences of Adivasi culture...but rather...'it is the zamindar's will which is the
law.'"(13) This is still the situation of much of Jharkhand today.

Conclusion

It seems to me that the major question that needs to be addressed here is why the government was
so adamant about changing the culture of the adivasis. From the advent of British rule, adivasis
were dealt with separately from the rest of India. They came under a special administration; their
boundaries were marked on ethnicity rather than geography. They were flooded with hordes of
missionaries, unlike that seen in other parts of India. What made the adivasis different in the
eyes of the Empire?

The answer to this, I think lies in the fact that the adivasis were different. The only
comparable group the British had dealt with in the past were the gypsies. Just as the British
relied on European conceptions of the place of nature in dealing with the ecosystems of India, so
too did they rely on their sense that vagabonds were dangerous and untrustworthy. They were
unfamiliar and uncomfortable with the adivasi culture, and were determined to change it, either
by persuasion or sanction--hence the use of the Criminal Castes and Tribes Act. Much as with
nature, they attempted (and succeeded, although perhaps not in the way they had planned) in
radically altering the adivasi society. Also as with nature, they brought about these changes all
under the guise of noblesse oblige.

Nor did this subjugation of adivasis end with Indian independence. It tells us something about
nature and society that, while the ideology of empire has been discredited, the ideology of the
utility of nature has not. It was, after all, India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, who
proclaimed dams to be the "new temples" of India. Social groups which refuse to accept this
view of ecosystems as commodities are still labelled as either dangerous or uncivilized. To
make this point, I quote from a weekly magazine.:

Across the length and breadth of the country, marriage may be a time for noisy
revelry, but fore the 25,000 strong Dafer community spread across Gujarat, it calls
for certain degrees of secrecy. Known throughout the state as a criminal tribe, a
wedding among them is a police officer's dream--a convenient gathering where
several suspects could be rounded up at one go.....Why should the police harass
them? The answer comes promptly. Says state DGP P.K. Bansal: "Among the
criminal tribes of Gujarat, the Dafers would top for their cunning, shrewdness, and
modus operandi."...Before Independence, it is said, many petty rulers would
encourage Dafer gangs in the states of their rivals. The fear and hatred have
travelled down the ages.....Although they are technically OCBS, the government has
done little for them. For want of a marketing outlet, the elaborate embroidery work
done by the women is usually sold at throwaway prices....Landless, homeless, and
unlettered, they are left to rally around themselves.(14)

This quotation us taken from an article in the April 30th issue of India Today.

In her recent study on Jharkhand, Susana B.C. Devalle makes this contemporary context more
clear. Devalle sees three distinctive groups that have used ethnicity as an excuse for subjugation:
the colonial rulers, who used tribalism as a process to forcefully incorporate adivasis into the
emerging world economy; the elite in post-colonial India, for whom "ethnicity can serve as an
element of support for the hegemony of the dominant classes and of the state;" and finally, those
whom she calls "Reformist ethnicists," mainly missionaries and educated adivasis, who
perpetuate the stereotype of what in the United States has often been labeled "the noble savage."(15)
As such, the colonial attitude toward migratory groups is still running strong fifty years after
Indian independence.

In his work on deforestation in colonial Burma, Michael Adas quotes a revenue department
office who argued for the forced implementation of more modern methods of rice-cropping:

"We are dealing with semi-civilized race; we should assist them in advancing themselves; they
cannot without our assistance; we should induce them--I go further, we should press them --to
accept our system beneficial to advancement; our superiority as a nation warrents us to do this."(16) This same attitude evolved into policy in South Bihar, and irrevocably changed the lives of the
adivasis of Jharkhand.

2. See Christopher V. Hill, "Ideology and Public Works: 'Managing' the Mahanadi River in
Colonial North India," in Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, Vol.6, No. 4, December 1995, pp. 51-64; and Christopher V. Hill, River of Sorrow: Environment and Social Control in Riparian
North India, 1770-1994 (Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies Monograph Series, 1997).

3. Sir Arthur Cotton, "Report on the Cutting of a Canal between the Ganges and the
Hooghly," 15 June, 1858. Bengal Public Works Proceeding, Vol. p/16/33, January to February
1859.

16. Michael Adas, "Colonization, Commercial Agriculture, and the Destruction of the
Deltaic Rainforests of British Burma in the Late Nineteenth Century," in Richard P. Tucker and
John F. Richard, eds., Global Deforestation in the Nineteenth Century World Economy (Durham:
Duke University Press) 1983, p. 101.